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The Minister reported on the Ministry’s performance in 2019 and plans for the future organisation of its work.

Vladimir Putin congratulated Yevgeny Zinichev, current and former Emergencies Ministry staff on their professional holiday, Rescue Worker’s Day.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Zinichev, it is your professional holiday today. I would like to congratulate you and all Ministry employees on Rescue Worker’s Day. The Ministry’s work is well-coordinated, seamless and efficient.

Rescuers are often the last hope of those who find themselves in emergency situations. And the Ministry’s workers always come to the rescue. Their assistance must be provided in time and in full.

Your Ministry is large, and as I said, well-coordinated. I wish every success to you and your staff.

Minister of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief Yevgeny Zinichev: Mr President, thank you. Thank you for your interest in the Ministry’s activities.

If I may, I would like to say a few words about the events the Ministry was involved in this year.

2019 was not an easy year for us, basically, as is usually the case, I guess. In total, there were 261 emergencies in Russia: both natural and anthropogenic. There were three disasters on a federal scale.

Our units also took part in extinguishing 460,000 anthropogenic fires and responded to 3,420 water emergencies. They responded to 100,000 car accidents. In total, the Emergencies Ministry units rescued over 250,000 people this year.

However, the year was really intense. It started with relief efforts following a horrible tragedy in Magnitogorsk where a section of a residential building collapsed.

Wildfires in the Trans-Baikal Territory were the next trial for us. The landscape fires spread to villages and towns and damaged 17 of them, including 111 residential buildings with almost 500 victims. Fortunately, no one died.

And, of course, a massive flood in the Irkutsk Region. This was a serious challenge. Almost 135 settlements were hit by the flood, with nearly 11,000 buildings damaged; about 5,500 of them were beyond repair.

Unfortunately, 26 people fell victim to the flood. The total loss to the federal budget exceeded 40 billion rubles.

Of course, it was important for us to deal with the rainfall floods on the Amur River in the Far Eastern Federal District. It must be said that there was no loss of life there either; and we made effective use of the active warning technology. I can elaborate, if necessary.

Over the course of nine months we had a difficult forest-fire situation. Fortunately, we prevented fire from spreading to inhabited areas and killing people. The fires were in Yakutsk, the Irkutsk Region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of smoke contamination, affecting over 600 locations. The Defence Ministry played an active role in extinguishing the fires, and the task was successfully accomplished. We have proposals on how to improve this work.

Vladimir Putin: Good.

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